Short links for June 5th, 2008

My main idea with this gadget was to have optical control over the three main basic cellular automata (CA) controls (which are controlled by the pots on the right side, from the top): algorithm (the algorithm used to generate the type of cell which also controls what tone is generated based on the object created), width across the grid, and speed of cellular generation, each line generated one at a time from top to bottom.

The hardware brain module (containing the Arduino microcontroller and a collection of circuits to assist in obtaining the sensor information) is called the Drum Master. This is connected via USB (technically, a virtual serial port over USB) to a computer,

which is running the Drum Slave software, written in Python.

When a sensor is hit, the Drum Master converts the signal to a digital value, and sends this value (and the port on which the sensor was detected) over the serial port. The Drum Slave program listens for this, and plays the corresponding audio sample.

I decided to put up this instructable because (to my surprise) no one has a hydrophone instructable up yet. I made mine using a mixture of other people’s hydrophone creations that I found through a google search and a bit of ingenuity.

At present, AudioCubes shine as a cool-looking device for experimentation and live performance. Only you can say whether that novelty justifies the boutique price; the results will depend on your creativity.

# Isidore, the modular robot with CV lights – "My friend Louis shot this video while I was testing the voltage controlled lights with some 16 steps sequence MIDI running in cubase, then converted to CV by Doepfer MCV24. All sounds by Doepfer A100 modular synth."

# How to Deal with MIDI Clock Signals in Arduino – Sebastian Tomczak shares some generic Arduino skeleton code that could be used to synchronise many different types of things to MIDI clock (and therefore ProTools, Ableton Live etc — any type of host sequencer).